Is anyone on this board actually working class?

I'm studying STEM right now but last summer I was working at an industrial bakery, sorting buns that were considered 'unsalable' by hand, taking hot baking trays from conveyor belts and labeling pallets.

This summer I'm working at a distribution center of the national post. I'm pretty much throwing packages on conveyors all day.

Foodservice, sales, yardwork, factory floor, construction.

...

Food stamps aren't good enough for you?

...

That's actually true, though.

In your mind yes, in reality it requires more labor than any other class.

It's not.

Every person who lives by wages, who earns money instead of making money, is working class. Working class is not blue-collar factory workers or people working in mines with faces dirty with coal, it's just every wage-earning loser out there.

Yes, we know. But just like "private property", "capital", "labour" and so on, working class/proletariat has one meaning in the social sciences that inform left-wing theory and another popular meaning that has spread since those social sciences were first developed.

Earning money and making money are the same thing. You're splitting hairs.

How so?

The bourgeoisie are manual labourers?

More responsibilities, higher risks, managerial tasks require you to be everywhere at once. Same goes for being a general rather than a private. With great power comes great responsibility.

I'd say Upper Class implies a freedom from manual labor. You don't have to hire people to cook meals or clean your house but if you don't feel like doing those things, you can throw money at it instead of time and sweat.

You're kinda dumb.

Most of that shit is delegated out to other wage slaves. None of it is manual labour anyway.

I don't think household chores out you in the same category as manual labourers.

That means absolutely nothing coming from a leftist.

There is no 'freedom' from labor. All classes participate in it.

Unless you own the means of production, you are working class.

Physically what are you even referring to? Try thinking in terms of a service-sector economy.

My family is pretty well off but I'm not a leech, I work at a warehouse and pay my own bills.

Why bother with promotions when you can just kill the boss?

lol

What else is there to refer to other than the physical means of production?
The service sector means of production would probably be things such as warehouses, vehicles used for transportation, buildings, etc.

I'm a forklift operator and do a little bit of welding.

I am working right now.
I have done both for family and as a job. Digging under the sun.

Nope. That's nazis.

Manual labor means working with your hands. But if you mean it in the sense of strenuous physical work, how about yardwork and home repair and improvement then?

My point is that the rich can hire people to do their work for them, strenuous or not.

I work at a hotel. Do I own the hotel? The rooms? The PC am working on? NOPE!

Apparently, you've never heard of "Right To Work". Happened to me too, only mine was an accident at work.

Won't pay your rent.

Here here. Factory jobs all my life

I'm working class. I'm a filthy low-class prole in Mexico

Sure.

Numerous stints in warehousing and factory work - and an admittedly short time at an industrial chicken slaughterhouse.

Bait thread. LEFTYPOL GROW UP. STOP REPLYING.

Plenty here have done more manual labour than fuckface OP ever has. Why not let him know?

How do you even define working class? Why does it have to be physical?

I'm a night-time writer for a local news station. I make a poor salary and work all night.

Why am I not working class?

If you work for a wage, you're working class.

No we're mostly all factory owners and land aristocrats larping. I'm a billionaire oil tycoon for example.

I work as a logger, mostly operating a harvester, but sometimes with a chainsaw if the need arises.

I package meat and stock the butchery at a supermarket currently.

I bet there are more workers and less NEETs on here than on Holla Forums.

Worked in a slaughterhouse and piggery for a few years in my teens, fetishising "working class lifestyles" is fucking shit, nobody wants to do work like that, it's shit. Food service and that kind of thing later on. I'd say my background is lower middle class, I ended up going to a pretty good university in the end.

Yes, and yes.

I worked in a deli, as a fast food worker, did day labor moving heavy shit (which i quite enjoyed) three days ago, and my new job is assembling brake lines starting tomorrow.

Is that working class manual labor enough?

What I'm saying is that the so-called welfare state that Holla Forumscucks and other reactionaries get triggered over doesn't actually exist

Well, there are holes in my walls and one time a giant rat came out of my closet.
Also my dad worked in some sort of door factory his whole life till he got fired and it closed down, dont know what he does now.
My brothers have worked wage slave jobs and my mom is a stay at home mom.
We have never had to starve but i wouldn't say we are super rich.
No one in my family has ever been beyond a slight venture into community college and the only reason i am informed on politics and the world, and history and philosophy is thanks to the invention of the internet which allows me to research topics i am interested in.

I was actually just thinking about this, like 95% of the time communist are usually like upperclass, college educated white kids while the actual lower class are gun clinging, jesus loving rednecks and urban thugs.

The college educated white kids become liberal after 30. Never trust a comrade under 30, lads. BTW almost all far leftist who are older are lower class

I've worked running cable

Cool meme.

And my current job is manual labor.

Ah yes, there we go. Here's the guy who has to make a statement denying that he considers a trait that is looked up positively by society as good. And in the next sentence he affirms that he only has that trait irrespective of what society believes.

Like the man who claims that sex is a meaningless act and you should not chase it, and in the next breath talks about his numerous lays.

Fucking pitiful

Learn to differentiate blue collar from working class, you fool.

A factory worker is blue collar, he engages in manual labor. While an IT guy working a wage job or a secretary/human resources person who picking up phones or who stacks files is still working class.

Also working class has nothing to do with the amount of pay. A working class person in Sweden earns as much as a bourgeois in Bangladesh, if not more.

In general you can distinguish working class from bourgeoisie in who engages in productive labor and who does not. For example:

Lawyers, judges, Managers, Cops, CEO's, prostitutes, overseers, politicians, large business owners, government administrators, bankers

ARE NOT WORKING CLASS

see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_labour#Marx.27s_critique

I've been an assistant in a photographer's studio, I've worked at several car washes, I've done landscaping, been a dishwasher, beta tester, and sold artwork.

Well, it ain't gonna suck itself, now is it?

Do you sell your labor power for a wage?

Yes, I've done the shittiest jobs imaginable.

Now fuck off.

Das right.
Being upper class is so fucking hard work.
Paris Hilton for instance bust her ass more than everybody in this thread put together :^)

Sometimes my mom makes me vacuum the house or I can't play Xbox

Yes you smug cunt. Besides going to school ive worked period of more than full time (50 hours a week) in a DIY warehouse for 5 dollars an hour, and after that I was a stockboy in a supermarket after lessons for 6 dollar 50 an hour. Translated form euros for you Americans, because you obviously are one, considering your implied IQ.

Let me ask you OP, have YOU actually done any manual labour in your life? Or are you just an edgy 16 year old in your moms basement thinking "lol fuggen commie parasites".

Thats where you are wrong kiddo. A service is also a commodity.

They own the means of production.
They should really be put in a different category outside the standard prole/bourg dichotomy.

Sex slaves would be proles, but that's already illegal and punished harshly.

Only if they work on their own. Most of the time they work in brothels or for pimps, and thus are exploited.

I think we used to call people who are basically a one man cooperative, artisans, a while back, but its not said a lot.

So most of this board, including me. I dunno. I've only gotten more radical as I've grown older. I'd say under 25. Most people's brains don't stop developing until then anyway.

We've had this conversation. Some say it's work, others say it depends. If they're setting their own rates it's more of a merchandising arrangement; if they're working for a Madame or in a blowjob bar or cafe, it's work. Difference being the latter has surplus value appropriated while the former doesn't. Courtesans, however, offer more than time with their body, so it's more of a service, and their rates tend to be a lot higher. They're a bit difficult, petit bourgs or high-income proles? Probably the latter, unless they actually own their own business with themselves as the sole employee. You could also argue that solo prostitutes are engaged in unproductive work, like a bank clerk, where technically there is no surplus value being appropriated (what do banks produce other than loans and other bullshit?) On the other hand, sex workers are productive in that they're producing a service for an employer. It's an interesting question, actually.

Its not an interesting question, its not even a question. Marx clearly stated that a service is a commodity. It acts exactly like one. It is made by labour, it can only be consumed once and then its gone. The only difference between an apple and a service is that you can delay the consumption of an apple, while you cant delay the consumption of a service.

As such, if people provide a service, they produce a commodity. If they do not get the full fruit of their labour, but their boss does, they are exploited. Otherwise, they are not exploited.

People basically say "Whatever age is below me".

It is the same logic baby boomers and other idiots use when they say "I was a socialist when I was young, its just a phase, you will grow out of it". You dismiss someones opinion based on their age, not the opinion itself, which is pretty non-socialist.

I'm going by Wolff not Marx. It's also a one-dimensional answer. By your description a solo prostitute, sex worker, and a courtesan are only defined by exploitation or the lack thereof. Not all workers are exploited in the sense there is direct appropriation of surplus value: Wolff refers to this as the fundamental class process. It's not characteristic of all businesses. So, yes, it is a question since we've moved on from repeating Marx alone.

wew lad am I talking with a maoist? Piss off.

That's a weird hybrid situation.

An analogous situation would be a factory worker owning his own machine and raw materials, but renting the space to use them. Obviously any rent-seeker is bourgeois, but I wouldn't say that someone was a prole just because they rented their work space. Even mega-corps like Microsoft will rent office space where required.

There's nothing stopping a prostitute from doing house calls or fucking somewhere else. If the pimp is literally claiming exclusive ownership over their body, then they're a sex slave which is different.

Being a prole or bourgeoisie isn't an exact science, its a description of different positions, but people can do multiple positions at once. The point is to abolish the position, not the people.

As for the prostituted, they are often kept in line by abuse, drugs, manipulation and threats.

Yes, I feel very sorry for them. Just as sorry as I feel for every other person stuck in this god-forsaken shithole of a society.

You're right that semantic arguments are stupid and we should focus on finding actual solutions.

I remember the thread where this question came up and there was a good reply by a hammer and sickle. Prostitution can be seen as unproductive labour where labour is exchanged directly with revenue and not capital.

Only productive labourers are proles because they are alienated from their labour. Whether this limits the number of potential revolutionaries is up for consideration.

not strictly manual labor, but building and operating servers in a datacenter involves quite a bit of it

also

Let's free the workers!

To do what?

To do work, of course.

i worked in a factory with filling machines, just had to put the bottles into the line carefully. it was fucking retarded how some of the things were set up, could've spared them loads of works but didn't want to feed the greedy bastards more than necessary.
had to show up every day to then hope they had enough work and that i'd get a free place, otherwise i was send back home and had lacking working hours.
got sick from the chemicals i think, place smelled like shit.
got fired on christmas eve after 3 months only.
worked a few other jobs casually, always from a few years to max 2 months each, except for one job-integration program that went on for a whole year taken all together.
had no job in years due to fucking depressions and shit.
am i working class enough?

I have worked in, charities, as a receptionist, at about 5 different bars, about 6 or 7 kitchens,I've been a waiter, bunch of different temp agencies, I've worked in 3 different call centres, I've worked in a cafe, I've dealt drugs, I'm 24 been working since I was 16/17.

also I have gone round peoples doors fundraising for charity (but also getting paid for it, somehow)

I've also gone to university in that time